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Period: to
Revolutionary War Era
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Brtish schooner Gaspee
Angry Rhode Island residents boarded the Gaspee, set it afire, and sank it in Narragansett Bay. The British response to the affair further inflamed American opinion. Instead of putting the accused attackers on trial in colonial courts, the British sent a special commision to America with power to send the defendants back to England for trial. -
The Tea Act
Passed to save the Britain's East India Company. Gave the Company the right to exprt merchandise to the colonies without paying any of the navigation taxes that were imposed on the colonial merchants who were the middlemen. Monopolized tea trade. Many colonists boycotted tea. -
The Boston Tea Party
Three companies of 50 men each passed through a tremendous crowd of spectators, went aboard the three ships, broke the tea chests and threw the tea into the harbor. Staged similar acts of resistance. -
The Coercive Acts
Parliament closed the port of Boston, reduced the power of self-government in the colonies, permitted royal officers to be tried in other colonies or in England when accused of crimes, and provided for quartering of troops in the colonists' homes. (The Intolerable Acts). -
First Continental Congress
Delegates from all the thirteen colonites except Georgia were present at the First Continental Congress which convened in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. They rejected a plan for a colonial union under British authority, endorsed a statement of grievances betweeen moderates and extremists, aproved a series of resolutions -
General Thomas Gage
Sent a detachment of about 1,000 soldiers out from Boston to Lexington and Concord. Intended to surprise the colonials and seize the illegal supplies without bloodshed. Patriots in Boston were watching the British movements, and during the night two horsemen, William Dawes/Paul Revere, rode out to warn the villages. The British arrived, and minutemen awaited them. Shots fired and eight minutemen died. The British moved on to Concord and found the powder was removed, so they burned what was left -
The Conciliatory Propositopns
Parliament now proposed that the colonies, instead of being taxed diractly by Parliament, would tax themselves at Parliament's demand. WIth this offer, Lord North hoped to divide the American moderates, who he believed represented the views of the majority. But his offer was probably too little and too late. It did not reach America until after the first shots of war had been fired.
